Researching the Body Electric in Interwar Europe: Psychoanalysis, Dialectical Materialism, and Wilhelm Reich’s Bioelectrical Experiments

Abstract

This dissertation presents the background and details of Wilhelm Reich’s bioelectrical experiments on sexuality and anxiety that took place following his immigration to Oslo in 1934. The experiments were meant to test Reich’s concept of “orgastic potency,” which holds that the orgasm is the most fundamental expression of organic life, represents the antithesis of anxiety, and is bioelectrical in nature. Using an oscillograph, Reich measured the psychogalvanic skin response in volunteer test subjects. These experiments mark an important moment in the history of sexual physiology and sexuality more broadly. Since Reich was an adherent of Marxism at the time, they are also a useful case study of dialectical materialist science in the interwar period. Furthermore, they are important to the history of psychoanalysis, and they should be understood as an extension of Reich’s work under Freud. By placing the experiments in their proper historical context, the dissertation reveals how sexual science is inextricably embedded in the social, political, and cultural mores of a specific time. I argue that Reich’s laboratory persona is best understood as that of a heroic scientist cum independent inventor. His bioelectrical experiments shed light on sexuality and philosophy in interwar European medicine, and their analysis is an important contribution to multiple narratives in the history of science.